Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Gone Fishing - Curse of the Crayfish & Mabou

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

“I swear I smelled his breath.”We’ve got another Postcard from Canada for you today. It’s about the town of Mabou, Cape Breton, but it’s also about the art of fly fishing. And we’ve got a Dave & Morley story for you: Dave and friends enter a fishing derby and catch way more than they expected!Ad-free listening is here! Listen to the pod ad-free and early, PLUS a whole bunch of other goodies – like virtual parties, Q&As, listener shout-outs & more. Subscribe here: apostrophe.supercast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. We're going to start today's episode with one of my favorite postcards from a memorable trip we took to Cape Breton and a wonderful day spent on the river. Stuart was not the first to wax lyrical about the joys of fly fishing, and he probably won't be the last. But I loved hearing this again. His beautiful description of the art of fly fishing, what he calls a dance with nature. Later in the show, we have a Dave and Morley story for you, too, a story that's also about fishing. So I guess you can probably guess today's theme, right?

Let's start with this. This is Stuart McLean back in 2010. From Strath's Bay Place in beautiful Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, it's the Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean. Thank you very much. What a delight to be back in Cape Breton. I've had a lovely visit this week. We've been counting the days till we got to Mabu.

Vinyl Cafe producer Jess Milton has been looking forward to running along the old railway tracks. I've been looking forward to the pizza at the Mabu River Inn. Went to the Red Shoe Puff. for dinner last night, owned by the Rankin family. Part of it anyway, though I guess you could say that about a lot of this town. This morning, before breakfast, I went for a ramble along the old railway tracks myself. The trail runs right beside the Mabu River. Just hiked at the last time we were here and has been talking about it ever since.

She says it's one of her favorite trails in the country. And now I agree. It's a beautiful walk, especially as the trail meanders through the wetlands and over that gorgeous trestle bridge. I saw a fox this morning and a bald eagle, which is a big deal for me. Although I understand these days on Cape Breton Island, there are almost as many eagles as beaten. We drove up from Halifax, but we took the long way around, dropped in here and there along the way. my first good visit to this side of the island, but it won't be my last. I have swum in the ocean and walked the trails, listen to music, gone looking for whales. Goodness, I've started to rhyme.

But of all the things I have done since I arrived on Cape Breton Island, the thing I'm going to talk about when I get home is the morning I got up at sunrise and went fly fishing on the Marguerite River. I have never fly fished in my life. I'm a city boy born and bred, and as one I was neither born or bred to field or stream. I am not a hunter or a fisherman. To be perfectly honest, I may even be squeamish about these things.

Don't really know. I've not been put to the test for years. I went duck hunting as a young man, and I did pull a trigger and brought one duck home for my mother to clean and cook. And she did that and we ate it. But I didn't develop a taste for either the eating or the hunting. To tell you the truth, I spent most of that chilly weekend cheering for the ducks. But this week I went fly fishing and I felt right at home in the river.

Fly fishing might just be the things. thing for me. Perhaps because when you fly fish, you're not really in any great danger of catching anything, or I'm not. And if you do, you can always let it go. On the marguerite where I fished, the season lasts for five months, June to October, if you're fishing for salmon, which is what I was doing, though you're only allowed to keep four salmon in a season. And no one would ever take more than free, because once you take your fourth, you're not allowed back on the river until the next year, and everyone seems to agree that taking the fish is not as important as being on the river, even though, curiously, that is what you are trying to do out there.

Anyway, I didn't come close to catching anything, though, as I said, I might have caught the bug. I understand the contradiction in the appeal. Part of it is the river. The river was beautiful. About the width of a country road, shallow, fast moving, and gravel bottomed, which is to say easy to walk in. The river banks free of trees just about a perfect place to spend a day. I was lone to set of waiters, which meant I could stand comfortably in the river up to my waist, and I did that.

And that was part of it too, to get right into the water and feel the pressure of it against the waterproof pants. You become a part of it in a strange way. And then there's the doing of it. I don't pretend to know anything about the doing of it. But I did stand there up to my waist in the water as the sun kissed the top of the mountains on the other side of the Marguerite Valley, the wind in my hair. It goes like this. Pull the rod up until it's over your head pointing at the sky,

but no further than the vertical. Stop at 12 o'clock and pause, 2, 3, and flick forward and watch the line float over your head. And when you do it right, drop on the water in front of you like a line of ribbon. And then do it again, up to the sky, pause 2, 3, 3, 5. flick two, three. You soon learn it goes smoother and further the less you try. And in the doing of it, it becomes so absorbing that you become, or I did, one with where you are. Which is to say, I was thinking of nothing else but the line and the water and the flight of the fly. And being

absorbed like that by the river and in the moment was just about as good as anything else I know. If there are others fishing beside you on the banks of the same pool, the etiquette on the marguerite goes like this. You take two casts than a step to your right, two more casts than step again. Everyone does this, a sort of slow motion river dance. And so it becomes a sort of a sort of dance with nature, slow moving and quiet and peaceful, and as many have said before me, strangely close to God. Norman McLean, no relation, wrote a famous story about fly fishing called A River Runs Through It. It begins like this. In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.

We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a fly fisherman and a Presbyterian minister who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen. and that John, the favorite, was a dry fly fisherman. I've always thought that was a beautiful piece of writing.

I think it more so now that I have been on the marguerite. I wish I could have written it myself. That was Stuart McLean, recorded in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with a Dave and Morley story about fishing, so stick around. Welcome back. Storytime now. This is Stuart McLean with Curse of the Crayfish. When Dave's neighbor, Gertil Lobeer, finally figured it out. It seemed so obvious to her that she just couldn't believe it took her so long. Struck her in the springtime. Carl, her husband, Carl, had gone all distant and was, you know, acting.

moody again. I could almost say depressed. I am not depressed, said Carl. It's exactly like last spring, said Gerta. And that's when she put it together. You miss the fishing contest, said Gertrda.

For 22 years, Carl had organized his company's fishing game. A team, said Carl, I organized the team. I was the team captain. It wasn't a game. It was a tournament. For 22 years then, Carl had organized the company team in this fishing derby, and then Carl had retired. Well, you make it sound like it was my idea, said Carl.

I would have kept working, and that is the rub. Carl never wanted to retire. And when he did, or more to the point, when he turned 65 and was forced to, never occurred to him that he would be dropped from the fishing derby roster. It was as much his thing as the companies, for heaven's sakes, and it wasn't like this derby was what you'd call business. What was most galling was that he still received invitations to the company's barbecue, company golf tournament,

and even to the fall food drive. Carl suspected Norm Harrison was behind his exclusion. Norm had leapt into Carl's seat before Carl had moved his last box out of his last box out of his office. Norm had been maneuvering for a spot on the fishing team for years. Derby is a big

deal, said Carl. If you knew anything about fishing, you'd know it's a big deal. And during his last five years as captain, but we came second, said Carl, twice. And third, once. We were

overdue. But you never won, said Gerta. But we would have said Carl. Exactly, said Gerta. And that is how Carl, Carl, O'bier, and

Bert, Dave's neighbor, Bert Turlington, and Kenny Wong and Dave came to find themselves a few weeks ago, shoehorned into room 24 of the Red Squirrel Motel and Cabins. One of those places where the wafer is soap,

the one wafer, comes wrapped in pale green paper, with a little picture of a squirrel gnawing on a pinecone. It was the last room and the only place with a room left. Everything else was book solid. We were lucky to get it, said Carl. Two double beds. Four grown men.

Dave and Kenny were sharing the bed next to the door. Bert and Carl had the other one. They arrived late on Friday night. At five on Saturday night. morning, Carl opened his eyes and saw Dave was already up. It's raining, said Dave. This was more or less the beginning of it. Five in the morning in the rain, room 24 of the Red Squirrel Motel, half a mile from Big Lake Boarot. They had two days. They could catch as many fish as they wanted, but each of them were only allowed to keep and submit one to the contest. Rest had to be

throwing back. There were two prizes. One for the biggest single fish, the other for the team total, the total by weight. Registration was at the marina. The marina was about half an hour away. Those are the guys, said Carl when they got there. That's Norm Harrison. I knew it. Carl's old office team. There were four of them on the team loading stuff into a low-profile fishing boat with twin 75 horsepower merks. One of those fancy bow riders with chairs, the kind you see on television fishing shows. They were wearing matchy khaki vests and green matching ball caps. Each one of them had so much gear hanging from his belt, they looked more like they were

heading out to repair phone lines than catch fish. Of course, it was Norm Harrison who spotted Carl. Whoa, Carl Lobbyar, said Norm. I didn't know you were still around. Carl was standing at the far end of the dock, beside a 16-foot tin boat with an old blue 10-horsepower Evan Rude. Their boat was filled with six inches of scuzzy brown water. Dave picked up a yogurt container floating in the bottom,

climbed in, sat on the far gunwale, and began to bail. They were looking for small mouth bass, a relatively small fish. Two pounds is a good size. Anything over four is a wall hanger. Yet said by bass aficionados to be pound for pound, the greatest fighting fish in the world. They were heading for a bay that Carl liked, threw a narrows and around a point,

and then left by a big flat rock at the end of the lake. Lots of low trees. shouted Carl over the motor, and dead falls, bath like shade. It was only 7.30 when they got there, and raining harder. They took turns, three fishing, one, bailing. It stopped raining at 10. 10.30, the sun was out, and the lake misty, and they peeled off their jackets. The bugs came out with a sign. They were bad, but you know, bearable, until Kenny opened a pop and it exploded,

all over Carl. And that turned Carl into a sticky, sugary fly magnet. Five minutes later, five minutes after he had doused Carl, Kenny caught the first fish. It was around noon. Carl said, toss it back. Kenny looked at the fish and shrugged. It was about one and a half pounds.

Carl was the boss. So Kenny threw it back. They didn't even take a picture. In the middle of the afternoon, it started to rain again. By four, it was coming down pretty steadily. Bert looked at Dave. Dave looked at Kenny. Kenny shrugged and pointed to Carl.

Carl said, yeah, okay. And they put their rods away, and they started the engine, and they headed back. Halfway there, Carl's old team passed them in their flat bottom boat. They were almost planing, the bow bouncing up and down ever so slightly. The four of them sitting under the bimony, bone dry. As they skimmed by, Norm Harrison reached down and pulled up a string of fish. Carl eyeballed it.

One at the bottom's got to be close to four pounds, said Carl, glumly. As bad as the day before had been, the next morning was good. As wet and cold as day one had been, day two felt blessed. It was a half hour before dawn when they pulled into the marina. It was still dark as they putted away in their boat. Out in Big Bay, Carl pointed out a moose bowl swimming across the lake. His huge head and antlers, a shableness. shadow against the dark shore.

Twenty minutes later, they pulled into their bay and surprised a raft of ducks. Carl heard them before he saw them. Their surprised coughs, and then the beat of their wings on the water as they lifted up and skidded down a safe distance away. The songbirds were only just starting to wake. Carl opened the bag at his feet and handed everyone a cup of coffee passed around a bag of muffins and they floated there happily

as the sky turned an impossible palette of pinks and powder blues. By 11 they had two fish neither of them huge but both big enough to keep both big enough to ratchet up the level of intensity maybe they could win this. Kenny began spraying his lure with a little aerosol bottle. Stuff smells horrible, said Dave.

Not to a fish, said Kenny. Fragrance of dead crayfish. Mm-mm. At 1130, Kenny was proved right. At 1130, he hooked his second fish. This one hit hard. Kenny jerked his rod and the fish jumped high twisting in the air on the way down. Tip down, tip down, said Carl.

Got to be four pounds, said Carl. As Kenny played his line out. It weighed five. Five pounds, four ounces. I don't remember anything over four ever, said Carl. This could be a record. The fish went into the well in the center of their boat, a little built-in swimming pool.

They still had six more hours. They didn't want it drying out. Didn't want to risk losing even a precious ounce of moisture. At noon they were floating there. Their feet up again, eating sandwiches, feeling not smug exactly, but clearly pleased with themselves. One more good-sized fish,

and we have a shot at this, said Carl. Carl's knee was bouncing up and down. Carl was excited. Take that, Norm Harrison, muttered Carl under his breath. And that is when Dave pointed at a little weedy shallow and said, if I was a fish, I'd hide in there where it was cool, where there'd be stuff to eat, where nothing would eat. you. Wasn't such a bad idea. Carl had a pair of hip waders in his pack. Carl put the waiters on.

They paddled over and put him ashore on a rock. Carl waded into the weeds. He worked at it for about 20 minutes, the water up to his knees, waved at them in the boat, nothing yet, and he waited out further. The pressure of the lake pressed the waiters against his body. It felt as if he was being squeezed like he was wearing pressure socks. It felt like the lake was hugging him, like he was of the lake rather than in it. He moved deeper, from up to his knees to almost his waist, standing there in the weeds long, slow casts, long

slow retrieves the rhythm of it was completely absorbing draw the rod back throw the line out reel the line in draw the rod back throw the line out

it was like a dance one two three one two three a dragonfly landed on a lily had right in front of him, and time passed. How much? Who knows? There was a splash about 50 yards to his right. Something had broken the water to his right. Whatever it was, Carl sensed it was big. It jumped again. Carl spooled in quickly, about to wade over when he remembered the spray that

Kenny had slipped in his pocket as he was climbing. out of the boat. Try this, Kenny had said. Carl pulled the plastic bottle out of his pocket, and he shrugged. Gave his lure a few quick sprays. He glanced at his watch, four o'clock. They had two hours left. Most of the afternoon had passed.

It was now or never. On an impulse, Carl gave himself a blast from the aerosol. He thought it might mask his odor. Thought it might keep the fish from being scared away. He sprayed his back, his shoulders, and his arms. Carl was convinced they were one fish away from the championship. That one fish might be one cast away. He was waiting over to where that fish had jumped,

trying not to splash, trying to glide. When he got to what he figured was 20 yards away, Carl lifted his rod, drew it back over his right shoulder, and cast out the line. The lure hit the water. He let the lure saddle and he began to reel it in. Later he would swear he could feel the bass breathing on his line. But it didn't bite. Didn't do anything.

A second to cast. And then a third. On the fourth, he felt it again. But this time there was more than just breath. This time there was something. Carl stopped breathing. This was it. This was his moment.

Okay, Norm Harrison, said Carl under his breath. And he broke his wrists and he jerked his arms back to set the hook and his rod shook. and there was a flash of silver three feet above the water, the fish twisting against the sky like an acrobat. He felt the weight right away. It was almost as big as Kenny's. It was four pounds if it was two. And that is when Carl saw the bear. It was sitting on the shore, maybe 30 yards away.

The bear was watching Carl's fish as intently as Carl was. the fish jumped the bear stood up Carl wasn't sure who he should pay attention to the bear and the fish answered that for him the fish broke towards shore the bear stood up and charged the fish

which was still attached to the end of Carl's line Carl watched in horror as the bear flicked his fish into the air and caught it in her mouth possession as they say is nine-tenths of the law but possession can do strange things to a man that was Carl's fish

the notion that he no longer actually had a fish on his line hadn't sunken in the notion that he had a bear on his line didn't sink in till later Carl set his legs and jerked the line The bear who had been loping for the shore stopped dead and glanced over her shoulder. A look of amazement clouded her face.

She stood up on her back legs, her body swaying slightly, her snout in the air, testing the wind. Carl and the bear realized what she was smelling at exactly the same instant. Her favorite thing in the world. Dead crayfish. The bear was looking at the largest crayfish you'd ever seen. It was Kenny who spotted them. Or more to the point, spotted the bear on all fours, leaping through the water towards Carl.

It was Kenny who barked at Bert to start the motor. And while Bert fumbled with the engine, it was Kenny who realized they weren't going to make it in time. Kenny who scooped his five-pound champion bass out of the wet well. Oh, no. Oh, yes. Sorry, but that's just the way it has to be. Kenny picked up that five-pound bass,

and he held it over his head, and then he threw the fish as hard as he could. Hit the bear right on the snout, just as the motor roared to life. The bear snatched the fish right out of the air, just as they drove by her at full speed, no more than ten yards away. Closer, said Dave later that night.

I swear I could smell her breath. Dave and Kenny dragged Carl over the gun. on the fly as the bear turned and carried the prize fish to shore. They watched from the water as she ate the fish on the beach and then as she stood up and melted into the forest. Later that night, later on Sunday night, they were standing in a little group in their motel parking lot. They'd come in two cars. Both cars were parked and They were ready to go. The sun was down.

Carl's defeat by bear had been somewhat mollified by the thrill of escape. I swear we were close enough that I smelled her breath, said Dave, for maybe the tenth time. They're defeated also be mollified by the calamity that had befallen Norm Harrison and the team representing Carl's former workplace. I don't, said Carl. like to, you know, celebrate someone else's calamities, said Dave. Yeah, said Carl, but when they're the agents of their own decline, said Dave.

It's hard not to, you know, said Carl, gloat, said Dave. Norm Harrison's team had been caught using a worm blower, little device that inflates worms and makes them float off the bottom and into the strike zone. a flagrant transgression in this feel-good derby. Norm Harrison's team had been disqualified. And so Carl and his team went home. Not exactly champions. Almost champions, said Carl.

And not altogether unpleased with themselves. They got together to celebrate a month later at Kenny's Cafe after closing. The four of them sitting in the booth in the corner. A platter, a crispy spring rolls, a whole steamed fish with garlic and ginger, a broccoli and a spicy pepper sauce, a bottle of red wine. To the bears, said Dave, holding up his glass. I swear I smelled its breath. They all hoisted their glasses. And when they drunk, Dave looked at Kenny and nodded ever so slightly. And a few moments later, Kenny got up and

disappeared through the swinging doors into the kitchen. and when he came back, he was carrying a package wrapped in brown paper. Shubbed the brown paper package in Carl's hands. It's from all of us, he said. Carl looked at the package and then at the three of them sitting there. Go ahead, said Burton. Unwrap it. They got their hands on a perfect fish skeleton, and they had the skeleton mounted on a plaque, like a taxidermy trophy.

Carl laughed. Bones of the bass, he said. There was a gold plaque screwed onto the trophy. Carl read the plaque out loud. Many people go fishing all their lives without knowing that it's not fish thereafter. Thoreau, said Bird. Never read Thoreau, said Carl.

Then Carl said, well, maybe we should try again next year. That's the idea, said Dave. We've already reserved a room. One room, said Carl. All for one, one for all, said Dave. And he reached out with his spoon and scooped the last of the ginger garlic sauce off the plate. I swear, he said, I swear it, I smelled her breath. That was the story we called Curse of the Crayfish.

We recorded that story at the Piggery Theater in North Hatley, Quebec, back in 2011. All right, that's it for today. But we'll be back here next week with another Dave and Morley story. He picked up the first cob, slathered it in butter, rolled it in salt, and brought it up to his mouth,

everyone watching, waiting for him to begin. It was, after all, his birthday. Everyone smiling as Eugene picked up his corn and bit into it and then pulled the ear back from his mouth. Exactly. The ear of corn wedged between Eugene's upper and lower teeth like a long yellow rat caught in a trap. Jesus and Mary, said Father Del Vecchio. It was the last bite of corn Eugene ever took. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the

Vinyl Cafe is part of the apostrophe podcast network. The recording engineer, today and every day, is Greg DeClute. I swear I smelled his breath. Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeClute, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.